A Brooklyn woman who mysteriously got stuck in a trash chute was rescued by firefighters Friday, avoiding a potentially deadly plunge to the compactor below.

Jewel Matthew, 36, was inside the opening of the chute - which was 2 feet long by 2 feet wide - and hanging six floors above the Crown Heights building's basement when firefighters arrived at 11:30 a.m.

As firefighters tried to reach Matthew, she suddenly slid more than a story down the tube, stopping between the building's fourth and fifth floors, Brandes said.

Fire officials said the woman's girth kept her from sliding all the way down.

"She's a heavier woman and weighs more than 200 pounds," Brandes said. "If she was not as big as she was, she could have fallen into the basement."

Firefighters on the floors both above and below Matthew used ropes to secure her in place so she would not fall farther, Brandes said. They cut the power to the compactor below and used a drill to puncture a hole in the chute's wall.

The firefighters gingerly pulled Matthew out of the tube a short time later. She suffered some cuts and scrapes and was covered in dust, but was otherwise uninjured. She was taken to Kings County Hospital for observation.

Matthew lives in the Lenox Road building, which is operated by SUNY Downstate Medical Center as a residence for some of its employees, officials said. Her mother works for the hospital.

The woman didn't say a word to her rescuers and never made eye contact with them during the 30-minute ordeal. She never screamed for help, Brandes said.

"It may have been a misguided suicide attempt," a law enforcement source said.